A key step prior to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference in December (COP21), the World Climate and Territories Summit is bringing together 800 politicians, business leaders, NGOs and trade unions on 1 and 2 July in Lyon. Veolia, partnering the event, is presenting its solutions for a locally and jointly built low carbon circular economy that also creates jobs.

The territories[1] are at the forefront of the fight against climate change. At the Summit, they are presenting their concrete commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions – to help limit global warming to 2°C - and the actions they will put in place to deal with the impacts of climate disruption. They are championing specific proposals so these solutions find a place in an ambitious agreement in Paris in December.

New York

Sao Paulo

London

Göteborg

Veolia jointly develops innovative solutions with territories through approaches that favor local "circular economy” loops. These allow them to limit their consumption of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, and therefore contribute to limiting CO2 emissions. The circular economy has done away with the linear "extract-make-throw" approach and gives value to what no longer had any: waste materials, waste energy, waste water.
To deploy a low carbon economy locally, Veolia offers a broad spectrum of solutions: energy saving, increasing energy efficiency, developing renewable energy (in particular biomass), recovering and recycling waste energy, and recycling waste (whether in the form of energy or materials).

Antoine Frérot, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Veolia

"Building jointly with the territories is one of the keys to fighting climate change,” says Antoine Frérot, CEO of Veolia. “Local players, communities, civil society, and businesses each have a part to play in the climate solution. Restraint, efficiency, conservation and seeking out new resources is the contribution a company like Veolia can make to the territories, which have to meet the needs of their citizens while using fewer natural resources."

With a low carbon, circular economy, Veolia acts as a catalyst in the growth and competitiveness of territories and offers the various stakeholders (users, industries, communities, etc.) cooperation methods based on creating shared value. Hand in hand with territories, it is reinventing its approach to traditional markets in order to develop access to resources and conserve and renew them.

Methane capture

Methane is one of the major greenhouse gases. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than that of CO2. Calculated over a century, methane’s global contribution to emissions is 14%, but taken over just the last 20 years, it is 40%! Veolia is campaigning for methane capture to become the standard method of operation for all landfill sites worldwide. Capturing methane emissions means limiting the amount released into the atmosphere, which could have a significant impact on the climate in the short term.